“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto”1—a statement Dorothy made to her dog, Toto, in The Wizard of Oz—sums up reasonably well the point I want to make in this article. That is, as literacy educators no longer con-strained (or protected) by older, more familiar 20th-century print-centric modes of communicating, we may at times feel challenged to keep pace with students’ preferences for producing and learning with multimodal texts that combine moving and still images, sounds, performances, icons, symbols, and the like. Often digitally mediated, these texts are familiar and freely available to youth who have access to the Internet. Indeed, a small but growing body of research suggests that young people’s ways of telling, listening, viewing, and thinking in digital environments may fac-tor into their self-identifying as literate beings (e.g., Alvermann, 2010; Livingstone, Bober, & Helsper, 2005; Ito et al., 2008; McClenaghan & Doecke, 2010; Rennie & Patterson, 2010; Skinner & Hagood, 2008; Thomas, 2007; Walsh, 2008). Although this research on young people’s online literate identities has implications for classroom practice, the liter-ature remains largely untapped by teachers, school library media special-ists, and literacy teacher educators. Why is this so? Just as importantly, what does this literature have to offer?
Online education has the potential to make higher education more accessible, and it has the ability to overcome the financial, social and geographic barriers faced by some students via their pursuit of a post- secondary education. It also has the potential to enhance student learning, both inside the classroom and within distance education context. However, if implemented in the wrong way, it has the potential to be disengaging, impersonal, and costly. Broken down into sections based on OUSA’s mandate of seeking accessible, affordable, accountable, and quality post-secondary education for all willing students, this paper addresses some of the major concerns that surround fully-online learning, and provides possible solutions for these issues. There is currently a lot of potential for growth in this area, but a lot of questions remain as
well. The following summary presents some of the topics discussed in this paper.
For most educators, writing a philosophy of teaching statement is a daunting task. Sure they can motivate the most lackadaisical of students, juggle a seemingly endless list of responsibilities, make theory and applications of gas chromatography come alive for
students, all the while finding time to offer a few words of encouragement to a homesick freshman. But articulating their teaching philosophy? It’s enough to give even English professors a case of writer’s block.
The purpose of this study is to estimate the effects of organizational attributes on social integration in particular, and more generally on the student withdrawal process. Theory elaboration (the application of new concepts borrowed from other theoretical perspectives to explain the focal phenomenon) is used to help with the revision of Tinto's interactionalist theory of individual student departure. The existence of empirical evidence supporting the importance of organizational attributes in the persistence process makes the addition of organizational characteristics a logical choice as a possible source of social integration in an elaboration of Tinto's theory. The results from this study provide strong supp elaborating the revised version of Tinto's theory through the inclusion of concepts from organizational theory.
Why does art matter? To make art is a liminal act—it creates an active threshold between risk and reward, between waste and resource, between personal trauma and social redemption. Human beings tend to do far more than is needed to main-tain a natural equilibrium between our selves, our relations, and the environments we live in. We are catalysts. For better or worse, we make change, and that change requires something extra from us. Humans generate an excess of energy that must be expended and consumed one way or the other—either for personal or private gain, or toward the profi tless exercise of helping one another become more human (Rolling, 2015). It is risky business to make something from nothing, without the overt goal of adding to personal wealth or prior-itizing one’s national interests. Each aesthetic response, either to one another or to the materials at hand, is fraught with such risk because so much is invested. Who is the artist working for? Is it solely for his or her career? Or, with each intervention undertaken toward the enhancement of our better selves, is much more at stake than the present-day culture acknowledges or values?
During the last third of the twentieth century, college sectors in many coun- tries took on the role of expanding opportunities for baccalaureate degree attainment in applied fields of study. In many European countries, colleges came to constitute a parallel higher education sector that offered degree pro- grams of an applied nature in contrast to the more academically oriented pro-
grams of the traditional university sector. Other jurisdictions, including some Canadian ones, followed the American approach, in which colleges facilitate degree attainment for students in occupational programs through transfer arrangements with universities. This article offers some possible reasons why the Ontario Government has chosen not to fully embrace the European mod- el, even though the original vision for Ontario’s colleges was closer to that model to than to the American one.
GLOBE is a research program focusing on culture and leadership in 61 nations.
It’s a confusing post-secondary landscape out there, with universities that are home to colleges and colleges becoming universities. Then there are the polytechnics. A true polytechnic offers four-year bachelor’s degrees, but isn’t a university. It offers apprenticeship programs and on-the-job learning, but isn’t a community college. The wrong thing to do would be to go by the name.
In recent years educators and policymakers have set a goal that students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. However, as a nation we are far from achieving this goal, particularly for low-income and minority students. For example, in states where all eleventh-graders take the ACT®, only 27 percent of low-income students in 2010 met the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in reading, with 16 percent meeting the Benchmark in mathematics, and 11 percent meeting the Benchmark in science.
Efforts to improve students’ academic preparation have often been directed at the high-school level, although for many students, gaps in academic preparation begin much earlier. Large numbers of disadvantaged students enter kindergarten behind in early reading and mathematics skills, oral language development, vocabulary, and general knowledge. These gaps are
likely to widen over time because of the “Matthew effects,” whereby those who start out behind are at a relative disadvantage in acquiring new knowledge.
Contract academic faculty make an enormous contribution to postsecondary institutions: in teaching, in research, and in administrative service. And yet they inhabit an uncertain, and sometimes perilous, space within the Canadian university system. For the most part, they lack job security. Their salaries are usually low. Many receive few, or no, health benefits. Most have no access to a pension plan. Full-time contract faculty teach more students, and over longer hours, than do their tenured and tenure-track colleagues: this can create challenges in staying current with changes in their disciplines and staying competitive in the narrowing job market. Many contract academic faculty report lack of access to meaningful decision-making within their Departments. Many perceive themselves to be unprotected by the basic protocols of academic freedom. The Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) seeks the support of our association members, our fellow scholarly associations, and Canadian English Departments in establishing more equitable, humane and respectful working conditions for Canada’s contract faculty professionals.
A philosophy is a set of principles based on one’s values and beliefs that are used to guide one's behavior. Even though your educational philosophy may not be clearly defined, it is the basis for everything you do as a teacher (DeCarvalho, 1991). It guides your decision making, influences how you perceive and understand new information, and determines your goals and beliefs (Gutek, 2004). An educational philosophy outlines what you believe to be the purpose of education,
the role of the student in education, and the role of the teacher.
Educational philosophies address the following kinds of questions: Why do we educate people? How should we educate people? How does education affect society? How does education affect humanity? Who benefits from a particular type of education? What ethical guidelines should be used? What traits should be valued? Why type of thinking is of worth? How should we come to know the world and make decisions? What is the educational ideal? What is the natural of reality? What do we believe to be true in regards to knowledge and truth? How do we come to know? What do you believe to be true in regards to humans and human
learning?
Perhaps we in higher ed should consider motivating students to graduate by focusing more on what they have left to do than what they have already done, argues Alexandra W. Logue. July 26,
For college and university presidents, the process of apologizing after high-profile missteps can seem to take as long as a tortoise walking a mile.
As a result, the actions Wednesday of University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Howard Gillman stand out as noteworthy. Days after news broke that the university revoked admission offers from 499 students, Chancellor Howard Gillman issued a public statement offering a personal apology. The university would admit all accepted students except for those who dropped below its academic standards, he said.
The relative speed and decisiveness with which Gillman acted raise the question of why more university presidents don’t step in so swiftly. Higher education’s recent history is littered with instances of leaders who seemingly hesitated to offer forceful apologies. Instead of pleasing the public by uttering two little words and a promise to fix
things, such presidents have been seen as incompetent, stonewalling or hemming and hawing.
Gemmell grew up on a berry farm in Stirling, Ont., watching his father fx or create whatever equipment he needed with whatever materials he had. It was a childhood that stoked his own passion for industrial design. (He once built an insulated dog house for the family pet, complete with a Plexiglas room with a view.) But when his portfolio of “backyard inventions” wasn’t enough to earn him a spot in the industrial design program at Carleton University, Gemmell ended up on a 13-year trek through life and higher learning. He earned a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and psychology at Brock University, worked for a year as a web designer in Toronto, but “wasn’t really feeling it,” so he spent a year in Whistler, B.C. snowboarding, and teaching snowboarding, until he ran out of money.
The question of how to hold Ontario’s universities accountable to the needs of students is a relatively complex one. One must be careful to balance the need for academic freedom with the public’s (and especially students’) right to be assured that its considerable investments into postsecondary institutions are being used effectively and appropriately. OUSA’s Accountability paper offers recommendations to improve quality assurance and strategic goal-setting in Ontario’s universities. In essence, it
describes students’ vision of to whom, for what, and how universities should be held accountable.
Key Performance Indicators Released April 20, 2016
Post-Secondary Education in Ontario: Managing Challenges in an Age of Austerity 905 Region - January 2013
Improving student outcomes is a primary goal of all postsecondary institutions. This report includes the first set of results for a research project that aims to understand the effectiveness of an intervention designed to improve postsecondary student success.
Student orientation and transition programs constitute an important part of Mohawk College’s Student Success Plan. The college endeavours to facilitate the development of an individualized “Future Ready Plan” for students to ensure they are prepared for their college experience by organizing goal-setting workshops during orientation and initial transition activities. Recent evidence suggests that an online, guided, writing-intensive approach to goal setting and self-authorship may have significant effects on student outcomes, such as retention and academic performance (Morisan et al., 2010; Schippers, Scheepers & Peterson, 2015).
It’s been said that no one dreams of becoming an academic leader when they grow up. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. It requires a unique skill set – part field general, part mediator, part visionary, and part circus barker – to name just a few. But what does it really take to be an
effective leader?
As sites of work-force development, community colleges must be responsive to the demands of the rapidly changing job market. Now, many community-college systems are turning to job-market data that are more up to date and more precise than ever before.